Vote Today and Every Day…

Today, May 1, thousands will take to the streets in a celebration of solidarity with workers, immigrants, students, retirees and unemployed people across the world. Occupied Media has journalists on the ground live-tweeting to occupiedmedia.us. The site will be updated by the minute with information on events as they unfold. If you’re not in the streets, check the site frequently for live coverage and frequent updates.

To be clear, no one associated with Occupy Wall Street advocates or calls for violence and condemns any criminal activities beyond General Assembly approved direct action civil disobedience techniques. Violent activities will be denounced as the work of Agent Provocateurs…

A deep democratic moment, something most of us have never seen and scarcely imagined, turned a small park near Wall Street into the center of a global storm. Everybody knows the deck is stacked. But it turns out not everybody is willing to put up with it.

Without asking permission, hundreds converged on the financial district to stop the machine. People convened open assemblies to think out loud together. Kitchens were built and volunteers served hundreds of thousands of meals. Books were borrowed and lent at The People’s Library with no need for a card. Nobody did it for money. Occupy Wall Street changed not just what we think is realistic, but what is actually possible.

Then the 1% hit back. “If you want to get arrested, we’ll accommodate you,” is how Mayor Bloomberg announced that the very act of challenging Wall Street would be treated as a crime. “Nobody can hear you when everybody’s yelling and screaming and pushing and shoving.” Funny stuff.

In school, we were taught that we are free to speak and free to assemble. Now we’re told we have “First Amendment Rights Areas” located inside steel barricades. Over the last eight months, nearly 7,000 have been arrested and occupations in dozens of cities have been systematically evicted.

Rosa Luxemburg said, “those who do not move cannot feel their chains.” We moved and we felt them. There’s an old saying: water beats rock. Put another way: you can’t evict an idea whose time has come.

It was never about a park. It’s about power.

Moving your money into credit unions takes power away from banks. Planting a garden in the city takes power from agribusiness. Mutual aid takes power from a culture of greed. Democracy is not simply speaking truth to power. It’s something we do, that we can’t ask for. Something like a rebellion.

The idea is simple and yet it seems far off, like a dream. But this is not a dream. And it’s not far off.

You take away politics, take away whether you think trickle-down [economics] works, take away even what you think about race. Just look at this community. Are the families healthy and thriving? No? Okay. It's not resilient.

The agency's assessment of fracking fluid disclosure is part of its broader study on fracking and water—and spotlights the project's limitations.By Neela Banerjee Oil and gas companies refuse to disclose 10 percent of the hundreds of chemicals they use during hydraulic fracturing, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency. […]

Two scientists from Columbia University launch a $40,000 pilot testing project in Pennsylvania they hope will lead to full-scale research.By David Hasemyer Frank Varano knows what's coming. His land near Williamsport, Pa., abuts property that has been leased for gas exploration––and he's certain it will be fracked. What is less certain is how that […]

If a new rule takes effect, about 95 percent of all pipelines would be subject to stricter safety testing because of their age, location and other factors.By Elizabeth Douglass It's been two years since a broken 1940s ExxonMobil pipeline flooded an Arkansas neighborhood with Canada's heaviest oil, and the ripple effects of the spill have made it to […]

(Reuters)The United States will submit plans for slowing global warming to the United Nations early this week but most governments will miss an informal March 31 deadline, complicating work on a global climate deal due in December. The U.S. submission, on Monday or Tuesday according to a White House official, adds to national strategies beyond 2020 already p […]

On March 2, motivational speaker Bob Lenz gave a presentation at Iron Mountain High School in Michigan... which might have been okay until he used the opportunity to promote an event he was hosting at a local church later that evening. This is the flyer he gave to students:And how did that evening event go? Well, he boasted about his conversions-to-Jesus aft […]

Gordon Klingenschmitt, the fundamentalist Christian and Colorado lawmaker, is finally getting a sort of punishment following his comments last week that the brutal attack of a pregnant woman occurred because we allow legal abortions in this country.He has now been pulled from one of the two committees on which he served:

How many religious references do we need to see from public school officials before we can all admit they've overstepped their bounds?Exhibit 1: Principal Albert Hardison's message on the website for Walnut Hill Elementary/Middle School in Louisiana, part of the Caddo Parish Public Schools:

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon→

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. ~Noam Chomsky

Transition Tools (Basic)

Stoics/Freethought

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman